Carte De La Californie Suivant 1. La Carte Manuscrite de l'Amerique de Mathieu Néron Pecci olen dresses a Florence en 1604.

Copper engraving, mm 292x387. From Denis Diderot's "Encyclopedie"; shows California and the Pacific Northwest drawn firstly by Mathieu Néron Pecci in Florence in 1604, then by Nicolas Sanson in 1656, Guillaume de L'Isle in 1700 and by the Jesuit Father Kino in 1705 and finally the Society of Jesuits in 1767. The five inset charts on this sheet reveal how little was known of the coast of California in the 17th and early 18th centuries, from the time when California was believed to be an island in Sanson's map of 1656, to the surveys of the Jesuits in 1705-1767, which finally disproved the island theory. However, until Capt. James Cook and George Vancouver brought back detailed charts of North America's west coast, the European cartographers continued to portray the coast from Cabo San Lucas at the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula to Cape Mendocino and Cape Blanco in present day Oregon, in entirely speculative topography. Robert de Vaugondy, who engraved and published this compilation of sections of early maps, intended the overall sheet to be a history of the mapping of California and it was included in the Supplement to Diderot's "Encyclopie" in 1779. Very good condition with original folds<BR>